HP LaserJet Pro 200 Color Printer M251nw Review

Table of Contents

Introduction, Design & Features

After our recent in-depth look at HP’s stellar new OfficeJet Pro X line of high-volume inkjet printers, we're now finding it difficult to get all that excited about a single-function color laser machine of any stripe. Built around the printer giant’s new “PageWide” stationary-printhead technology, the OfficeJet Pro X inkjets are equal to, if not superior to, small-office and workgroup color lasers in several ways—but most of all when it comes to the per-page cost of consumables. Competition in the entry- and mid-level business-printer market just got fiercer. A color laser printer needs to be pretty remarkable on several fronts to impress, now.

In fact, the introduction of PageWide-based printers into the business-printer market will most likely cause printer makers, including HP, to reevaluate their color laser pricing and positioning. Recently released color laser models, such as the $329.99-MSRP HP LaserJet Pro 200 Color Printer M251nw we’re reviewing here, may well get caught in the crossfire.

Like its multifunction sibling, the $449.99-MSRP HP LaserJet Pro 200 Color MFP M276nw we reviewed a few weeks ago, the M251nw is capable enough in terms of print quality and speed. We liked these printers well enough in isolation, but the far-too-high cost per page (CPP) of their toner makes them impractical for small offices, small businesses, and workgroups that have more than modest print-volume requirements.

In short, the M251nw costs too much to use. That's too bad, because it performed respectably on our benchmark speed tests, and we have no complaints about its print quality. However, we did find its lack of an automatic duplexer for printing two-sided pages disappointing. It’s not often that we see an over-$300 printer these days come without support for unassisted two-sided printing. Also concerning was this model’s somewhat small—small for a laser printer, that is—150-sheet input drawer.

In fact, the more we consider it, the more M251nw looks to us like a “personal” color laser printer in a high-volume printer's body—because the biggest trait of personal lasers, when it comes right down to it, is that they are designed not to be used all that much. That’s at odds with HP’s recommended maximum monthly duty cycle of 30,000 pages for this printer. But if you print that many pages (or even close) on the M251nw, it will cost you plenty extra compared to higher-cost, higher-volume models over time.

In sum, we see the M251nw as a low-volume laser printer, which really is a bit of an oxymoron when it comes to lasers at this price. You can find plenty of lower-cost inkjet models out there that print business documents almost as well—and for less money per page. We liked this machine’s print quality, but given the competition, only small offices and workgroups with very limited print-volume needs will find the M251nw a sensible pick.

Design & Features

The M251nw looks much like its MFP brother the M276nw—without the automatic document feeder (ADF), that is…

The M251nw is essentially the same machine as the MFP M276nw, sans the copy, scan, and fax functions.

At 15.9 inches wide, by 17.8 inches deep, 10.4 inches high, and 41.4 pounds, this is no petite desktop printer. However, unlike some costlier, high-volume models that require you to purchase optional, and often expensive, Wi-Fi modules, the M251nw comes with wireless connectivity built in. In addition to standard Wi-Fi, it also supports Wi-Fi Direct, a protocol for connecting the printer to mobile devices, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones, without either the printer or the mobile device being part of a network.

For those offices that don’t have a wireless network, you can also connect to the M251nw via Ethernet or directly to a PC via USB.

In addition to wireless connectivity, the M251nw also supports wired Ethernet and USB connections. (The jacks are outlined here in red.)

Like the M276nw, the M251nw lets you print from mobile devices through several alternative print channels. Using the touch-sensitive display, you can print from HP’s own ePrint service, Google Cloud Print, Apple’s AirPrint, and several other cloud sites. (In the case of ePrint, you send an e-mail to a designated address to print an attached document.)

You can also print from several other sites via HP’s printer apps. (Each time we review an HP printer, the list of printer apps gets bigger.) You can use them to download and print content from several news, sports, and celebrity sites, such as Yahoo, Times Digest Daily, 60 Minutes, and NBC News, as well thousands of forms and templates, from sources such as FreePrintable.net and Design a Sign. However, since the M251nw has no scanner, the printer apps for scanning content to various cloud sites, such as Google Drive, don’t work on this printer.

The all-digital control panel and touch-screen LCD make it easy to configure the machine, print from cloud sites or apps, and print from the front-facing USB port.

In addition to supporting wireless and remote printing, the M251nw also lets you print from USB thumb drives via a USB 2.0 port located directly beneath the control panel. You won’t find slots for printing from SD cards and other types of memory cards, but that’s not unusual for a laser printer.

You can print from USB thumb drives, but this front-facing USB 2.0 port does not support PictBridge devices, such as digital cameras.

Mostly, the M251nw is a full-featured single-function printer. However, as we mentioned earlier on, it does not have an auto-duplexing print engine for printing two-sided pages without user intervention. To print on both sides of sheets with this model, you’ll have to flip the pages manually. Nowadays, it’s highly unusual to find printers in this price range without automatic duplexers.

Setup & Print Costs

We can’t remember the last time we had any problems setting up an HP printer and installing the accompanying drivers and software. With these huge color LaserJet models, the hardest part of the setup process is hoisting them out of the box and onto our printer stand. Once we got this one unpacked and plugged in, clear and precise instructions on the LCD walked us through the rest of the procedure. After that, while installing the drivers, the setup utility found the printer on our wireless network, connected to it, and then copied the printer drivers and management utilities to our test-bed PC.

Like every color laser we’ve seen, the M251nw uses four toner cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). Out of the box, you get four 700-page “starter” cartridges, and they come preinstalled in a drawer that slides out from the front of the machine, as shown in the image below.

Four “starter” toner cartridges come preinstalled. All you have to do is remove the seals.

When the time comes to replace them, you’ll pay around $67 (on HP’s Web site) for the black cartridges, which are rated by HP to yield about 1,600 pages, and $85 each for the color cartridges, rated at around 1,800 pages. Using these numbers, we calculated the M251nw’s cost per page for monochrome prints at about 4.2 cents, and color pages at about 18.3 cents. Seldom have we seen a laser printer that costs this much to use on a per-page basis.

You can get these costs down—somewhat—by using HP’s higher-yield black cartridge for this printer, which sold for $86 at the time we wrote this. Rated for 2,400 pages, it delivers a per-page cost of about 3.6 cents for black-and-white pages. However, HP does not offer high-yield versions of the color cartridges for this printer, so color prints don’t come down much. The bigger black cartridge lowers the color CPP by about eight-tenths of a cent, to 17.5 cents. At these CPPs, if you print a lot, this printer will simply cost you too much to use.

Indeed, choosing a slightly costlier, higher-volume model could save you hundreds, even thousands, of dollars in a very short time. Take, for example, HP’s own recently released $599.99 OfficeJet Pro X551dw, a single-function machine based on the PageWide inkjet technology we mentioned earlier. The X551dw not only prints faster and supports auto-duplexing, but it also delivers significantly lower CPPs—as low as 1.3 cents for black-and-white pages and 6.1 cents for color. When printing thousands of pages, this difference of 2.9 cents per page can add up to thousands of dollars in savings over just a few months’ time.

The math proves it. For example, print 20,000 monochrome pages on the M251nw at 3.6 cents each, and the toner will cost you about $720. The X551dw, on the other hand, will print the same 20,000 pages for $260—a difference of $460. As a result, printing 20,000 pages per month for 12 months on the X551dw would save you about $5,520 versus the M251nw. Yes, we said $5,520! Yet the prices of these two models are only about $250 apart.

The difference is even more drastic with color printing. The M251nw’s whopping 17.5 cents per color page is more than 10 cents higher than that of the X551dw. If we use the same numbers from the previous paragraph, printing 20,000 color pages a month for 12 months on the OfficeJet Pro X551dw could save you well over $20,000. Granted, most offices wouldn’t even try to print that many color pages on this LaserJet, but still, printing only 2,000 pages per month on the OfficeJet Pro X551dw would save you about $2,610 over the same 12-month period.

Paper Handling

The M251nw’s only input source is a rather small 150-sheet drawer located at the bottom of the machine. Combine this printer’s high CPPs and this low-capacity input tray, and you can see why we would relegate the M251nw to the “personal” laser printer category.

The 150-sheet input drawer, while skimpy, is easy to access and load.

Printed sheets land on top of the machine, which doubles as a 125-page output bed. What we like about this configuration is that the printed sheets are well-supported in their collection niche, which helps avoid curling.

The 125-sheet output bed does a good job of supporting your printed pages.